The 5 Most Baffling Explosions in Movie History

#2. Casino Royale Teaches a Lesson in Welding Safety

After skepticism surrounding the appointment of Daniel Craig as agent 007, Casino Royale proceeded to impress even the harshest of Craig-detractors with its tough, gritty and invisible car-free rebooting of the Bond franchise. So imagine our shock when, in the middle of an expertly choreographed Parkour chase sequence, we're treated to this:

Yes, one of the construction workers decides to intervene by flailing at Bond with his cutting torch. He is kicked down several floors, surviving only to have his gas canisters fall on top of him and create a fireball the size of a city block.

Why It's Ridiculous:

Look, we understand that this is still Bond and that fans still expect the occasional explosion. But give the bad guy a bomb or a grenade or something and let that explode. Then you don't have to introduce this dumbass and his ludicrously volatile oxyacetylene gas cylinders. We're going to give the tank manufacturers enough credit to assume that the things can get knocked around a bit before they unleash a fireball big enough to clear most of a forest.

We like to think the shoddy performance of the tanks was probably the reason they were seemingly the only props in the film not sporting the Sony logo.

If It Really Worked That Way:

"I'm very sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, but Timmy happened to cough loudly while standing near one of the gas cylinders outside the lab. I'm afraid he didn't make it."

"Oh my God! Timmy ... "

"And I'm afraid there's the matter of the $100,000 of damage the explosion did to the building. Yes, it's the third department we've lost this semester."

#1. Waterworld and the Death Traps That Are Jet Skis

Kevin Costner's stardom began in earnest when he played Capone-busting Elliot Ness in The Untouchables. The film was praised for its hard-hitting and gritty depictions of 1930s Chicago, with Costner himself gaining much repute for his role as the man against a corrupt system.

Just seven years later, he spent the gross domestic product of several nations to make Waterworld. And man, you can really see the money up on screen in the epic climax:

Why It's Ridiculous:

Holy crap. What exactly was the bad guys' plan there? Even if the hero had done nothing, their jet skis would still have collided, Stooges-style. Kevin Costner's ridiculous bungee rescue did nothing to cause it.

Maybe the bad guys were just thinking that a head-on jet ski collision would cause nothing more than a loud thunk and maybe knock a couple of guys into the water. Little did they know that their vehicles were apparently packed with ex-Soviet 1980s nuclear fuel cells (check out the mushroom cloud).

If It Really Worked That Way:

We don't need to explain how much less popular jet skis would be if they were, as portrayed here, basically live torpedoes that you can ride around.

Or, maybe we're wrong, maybe real jet skis do, in fact react this way, but only when three of them collide perfectly at the same moment. That's probably never happened before and we're guessing the manufacturers never tested for it. Or, maybe the child Kevin Costner rescued was special to him specifically because she had the ability to shit sea mines.

Or, more likely, by this point in the nightmarish Waterworld production everybody involved just said, "Fuck it, make the bad guys explode so we can go home."

When Tom Black isn't doing stuff like this, he's making aimless sketches and movies that can be seen HERE.